Solicitors promise to get tougher on themselves

The Office for the Supervision of Solicitors, the revamped machinery for handling complaints against lawyers, will aim to provide a first response to dissatisfied clients within 24 hours, its chief pledged yesterday.

Peter Ross, the office's director, said at the launch of the successor body to the Solicitors' Complaints Bureau that he hoped contact could be made within the time-scale by letter, a telephone call or a visit by a local conciliation officer. That was one of a series of targets he promised in an attempt to rid the organisation of its reputation for delay, bias and toothlessness.

The body is effectively drinking in the last-chance saloon after the Legal Services Ombudsman warned that if it did not achieve a better level of satisfaction than the bureau it could be just a matter of time before the Law Society loses its complaints handling function altogether. Consumer organisations have also been deeply critical.

Mr Ross, a solicitor and former senior Crown prosecutor, admitted that the size of the task facing him and his staff of 200 was "enormous" and promised to publish performance targets covering delay, responses to adverse comments by the ombudsman (to whom clients can complain if they are still dissatisfied), improvements in handling of in-house complaints by solicitors' firms, the use of conciliation officers and regular updates on the progress of cases.

He warned his own colleagues that "a dissatisfied client can cost a solicitor 23 potential clients". It remains to be seen, however, whether the reforms are more than a change of name. A spokeswoman for the National Consumer Council said yesterday: "We will be watching the new body very carefully to see if it will be tougher on solicitors."